When It Came Down To It
by Luna Lovegood5
Summary: Post The Satan Pit. Rose thinks about domesticity and that infamous mortgage conversation. Very vaguely shippy.


**When It Came Down To It**

A/N: Set from straight after _The Satan Pit _up until a couple of weeks after.

Disclaimer: As always, I don't own a thing. Even the keyboard I typed this on isn't mine (I managed to melt my own with nail varnish remover).

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She saw him standing there, felt him holding her, and everything was alright. She wouldn't have called it happiness; she'd gone too far, seen too much to be happy straight away. Happy was a settled feeling, an emotion that tells you everything is going well and that you feel as though it will always be that way. Happiness came with security.

No, being grateful was much more the thing…she knew it could all be snatched away at another moment and she wasn't going to let go of that feeling just yet. Gratefulness, relief, allowed her to remember where happiness would have blurred the memories, faded the pain. Much as it tore at her, she knew it was grounding. What if one day she really did lose him? She thinks perhaps that this is the closest they have ever come to the inevitable.

She needed to hold on to how she had so very nearly lost in him order to appreciate the overwhelming fact that she was right there with him, breathing his air and living on his ship. Still there. Still the-Doctor-and-Rose. Settling, she felt, would probably be dangerous, and therefore so was complete happiness.

For days and days, she was just overwhelmed that they were together, alive and fighting for it. The events on that planet had truly shaken her – _shaken _her to her very core and kept her trembling with the after-shock for weeks – and so much so that it was all she could do to let the Doctor out of her sight of an evening.

Complacency is a dangerous thing. Happiness returned. Life was safe, and good, and calm, and she remembered.

Mingled in with the immense, swooping relief that still threatened to swallow her up was the teeniest, tiniest bit of disappointment. It came back to her one day, suddenly and without warning, as she remembered their awkward conversation on Kroptor. Although Rose had suggested sharing a mortgage with the Doctor on _friendship _terms, the idea of something more, with the constraints of companion and the threat of death removed, had infiltrated her mind. And now…ridiculous, last-ditch hope as it was, it was gone. They would never have that kind of life together, and she would never know if he'd wanted it.

It was ridiculous, she knew, that she almost _wanted _to be stuck there with him still, but she couldn't help it. A conversation like that would never occur again; the issue would never be brought up or touched upon. They never did dwell, and this particular matter was no exception – most especially as carpets seemed to be such a no-go area with the Doctor.

She had only realised, a few horrifying seconds after starting her absent-minded speech, that he'd taken it as 'let me imprison you in a domestic lifestyle with a white picket fence, lots of babies and a dog'. While she could quite see him going for the dog, she knew the rest of it terrified him more than anything else she could possibly have thrown at him.

But how could she stop there? What had started as _'I won't know anyone and I'm scared of being alone. Can I still live with you?'_ turned into testing the waters, waters which alternately burnt and chilled her toes as she dipped them in. Rose had never been good at dropping things so she blundered on, reasoning that she surely couldn't make the situation any worse. They were facing an eternity alone, for God's sake, and how pointless was that when they still had each other? There was no need for them to live out the rest of their trapped, immobile lives lonely as well as with cabin fever. Could it be so wrong that she was asking to be stranded with _him_?

If she had not known how he'd take it, she would have thought it odd. After all, they _did_ already live together, just on his terms (those being no carpets and certainly no cornflakes when coco pops were still on sale _somewhere _in the universe). She knew though, or at least she _hoped _she did, that it wasn't _her _he was terrified of: it was her old lifestyle.

And that was fine. It really was, because if he tolerated the way she was scared of something as normal as regeneration was to him, she'd let him get away with a fear of something as normal as domestication was to her.

If she were honest, much as it seemed an ideal, she was the tiniest bit scared of domestication too, when it came down to it.


End file.
